George Limbidis and Phil
Pritchard had spent the later part of the sixties in Australia and when they
returned to their hometown, Wellington in late-1969, Phil had a very short stint
with a group called Retaliation, before
George and Phil decided to form an
underground band, to play original material. A friend of Pritchard's, Jim Lawry
joined them. Jim was previously playing with Serenity Fair from
Northland. They began serious rehearsals as a band and at the beginning of 1970
they added Bruce Sontgen as their vocalist. Bruce was currently the vocalist for
Tom Thumb and had previously been with the
Boddys, the Layabouts and Apple.

They called themselves
Highway and after continuing their serious rehearsals for another six months
they finally made their debut at the Mickey Mouse Club in Wellington in August
1970. This was followed a week later with a headlining performance at the
University Arts Festival concert at the Paramount Theatre. They went across very
well to the capacity crowd and with that performance they became the hottest
band in town. They took up a residency at Lucifer's for the next few months. In
January 1971 they took a two month break and headed to a farm in the Wairarapa
to put together a new repertoire of songs. On their return they had added a new
member to their line-up. He was George Barris, who had a strong background,
having played with the Bitter End, the
Underdogs, Jigsaw,
Fresh Air and
Troubled Mind.

This new line-up debuted
at Victoria University in March and released a single for HMV called "The Time
Is The Time"/"What You're Doing To Me". The Universities Arts Council then
organised a national tour of Universities. This was the first tour by a New
Zealand band and was a huge success. They then moved back to Lucifer's and
performed to packed audiences every time. In August 1971 came the University
Arts Festival in Palmerston North, where Highway filled the support slot
to Australia's Daddy Cool. Ross Wilson from Daddy Cool loved them
and suggested that they should try Australia.

Before going to Australia,
the band spent time in the studio and produced a self-titled album which was
released around October 1971. The album, while good, was only a representation
of the music they were doing at that time. No sooner had they recorded it and
they were working on a new batch of songs ready to play in Australia.

Highway flew to
Melbourne at the end of the year and found a manager almost immediately. He was
Michael Gudinski, who was well placed in the Melbourne music industry. He was
the same Michael Gudinski who would later go on to form Mushroom Records. He
organised some good gigs and they were soon playing to large audiences at the
Myponga and Sunbury festivals. They continued to play well, but their style of
music was different to most of the other groups that were playing at the same
time. While they did manage to gather a small following of fans, it wasn't
enough, and Gudinski was unable to secure them a recording contract. Always on
the road with little time for rehearsal and songwriting, they soon began to lose
interest. Highway disbanded in mid-1972.

The group did reform in
Wellington towards the end of 1972, but without Barris and Sontgen. They did add
Dave Brown on saxophone, but lacking a strong vocalist, they ended up being
basically an instrumental outfit. In 1973 they changed their name to Danny
Douche and the Pelicans, which was a 50's rock and roll covers band. While
extremely different from their roots, it did give them more work than they were
getting. They only lasted a short time and with the members not really being
happy, soon broke up for good.